New placement opportunities with Optalis

Adrienne Finch and the social work placement team in collaboration with Pauline D’Cunha, Head of the Physical Disabilities and Older People’s Team (PDOPT) at Optalis have launched a new partnership that which will provide new placement opportunities for our social work students.

As part of this programme, five first year MA social work students from Brunel University are spending 70 days working on placements in the Optalis PDOP teams in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. They are supervised and assessed by Optalis senior social workers - Chorus Nyamakunda and Jennifer Richards; and senior social care practitioners Tanya Snooks, Gemma Argrave, Hayley Young. Students therefore benefit from the experience and knowledge of Optalis’ social work and care statutory services and will then be familiar enough with the way social care works to be offered later on a social work role at Optalis. For the Optalis’ social workers and social care practitioners, this will be part of their continued professional development and will include the option of enrolling on the Professional Education Programme where they learn to supervise and assess social work students and can progress their career to the next level.

“This is a very exciting pilot project and I would like it to rollout to all Optalis service areas based on the outcomes of this cohort of staff.”